These guys are pretty awesome:

Best line: “more racist than Don Imus editing a Ron Paul newsletter.”

Sen. Obama crushed the competition in South Carolina, taking 55% of the vote. This compares to 27% for Hillary Clinton and 18% for the Edwards. Also notable is the fact that more Democrats showed up to vote in their South Carolina primary than Republicans showed up for their primary. That’s probably a sign of bad mojo for the GOP this November — if more Democrats are showing up in South Carolina, a staunchly Republican state, things could get really ugly in states that are traditionally more competitive as between the parties.

Not that my little Indiana primary vote in the depths of May will make any difference, but Ms. Rodham Clinton just created another strike against herself in my estimation. She’s trying to change the rules of the Democratic primary in the middle of the game.

In an effort to keep a check on the ever accelerating primary schedule, the Democratic National Committee sanctioned Florida and Michigan for moving their primaries up in the schedule. The sanction was that their delegates would not count. The Edwards, Obama, and Clinton campaigns agreed to the sanctions. However, Clinton kept her name on the ballot in Michigan which, as one might expect, gave her a distinct advantage. She also happens to lead the polls in Florida where none of them are campaigning. So now, she wants to renege on her agreement and is urging that the Florida and Michigan delegates be seated.

Ezra Klein:

This is the sort of decision that has the potential to tear the party apart. In an attempt to retain some control over the process and keep the various states from accelerating their primaries into last Summer, the Democratic National Committee warned Michigan and Florida that if they insisted on advancing their primary debates, their delegates wouldn’t be seated and the campaigns would be asked not to participate in their primaries. This was agreed to by all parties (save, of course, the states themselves).

With no one campaigning, Clinton, of course, won Michigan — she was the only Democrat to be on the ballot, as I understand it, which is testament to the other campaign’s beliefs that the contest wouldn’t count — and will likely win Florida. And because the race for delegates is likely to be close, she wants those wins to matter. So she’s fighting the DNC’s decision, and asking her delegates — those she’s already won, and those she will win — to overturn it at the convention. She’s doing so right before Florida, to intensify her good press in the state, where Obama is also on the ballot. And since this is a complicated, internal-party matter that sounds weird to those not versed in it (of course Michigan and Florida should count!), she’s adding a public challenge that, if the other Democrats deny, will make them seem anti-Michigan and Florida.

But if this pushes her over the edge, the Obama camp, and their supporters, really will feel that she stole her victory. They didn’t contest those states because they weren’t going to count, not because they were so committed to the DNC’s procedural arguments that they were willing to sacrifice dozens of delegates to support it. It’s as hard as hardball gets, and the end could be unimaginably acrimonious. Imagine if African-American voters feel the rules were changed to prevent Obama’s victory, if young voters feel the delegate counts were shifted to block their candidate.

A strong John Edwards Ad:

I’m not saying this will get him a win in South Carolina (or even second), but it can’t hurt.

Patricia Nell Warren has a great post up over at bilerico on the subject of the media and election perceptions. The major media’s efforts to stuff an event into a particular sort of narrative becomes evident when the event is a little ambiguous. It’s sort of the election equivalent of the legal maxim that “hard cases make bad law.” In both cases, it’s just tough to stuff the thing in the box you had all set up for the occasion.

Nevada is a good example. Every election night, the major news outfits want desperately to declare a “winner.” But, the problem is, things are a little fuzzy out there. In Nevada, they have caucuses that nominate delegates that go up to the state level and eventually 25 state delegates are chose to go to the National Democratic Convention. Getting delegates at the district level who are committed to you is the point of the caucus process, but it guarantees nothing. The delegates aren’t obligated to vote for a particular candidate, though it would seem like the honorable thing to do. Despite losing in the popular vote, Obama is either tied with or ahead of Clinton in terms of probable delegates. Clinton received more votes by a fair margin. Obama is claiming a victory because he got more delegates (according to some counts). Clinton is saying, “you haven’t won anything because those delegates could change allegiance.” Unreliable as the delegate count might be, it was the only thing legally at stake in the Nevada primary. As little as Obama actually “won,” Clinton “won” even less.

Now, what’s really at stake is the media narrative. Clinton wants the national news outlets to declare her a “winner” so that more people will want to jump on her bandwagon further down the line. Events like Nevada make us look at our election process a little closer, and, when we do, it all looks a little ridiculous. Are these primaries really nothing more than a pretext for creating an artificial media narrative? Insane. If that’s not the reason for these elections, and the primaries are about winning delegates, then Obama won Iowa; Obama won New Hampshire – because he got more delegates, even though he lost the popular vote to Clinton; and Obama won or tied Nevada for the same reason. And, for what it’s worth, Clinton isn’t really in a position to make a lot of noise about the virtues of pure democracy in the primary process. Even though that would help her in terms of claiming victory in New Hampshire and Nevada, she has to be mindful of the fact that her real advantage in the primary process at the moment is her lead in the quest for “superdelegates” — those delegates to the Democratic nomination that aren’t directly elected through the primary process, but who are part of the Democratic Party establishment. As I recall, they make up something like 1/3 of the delegates.

According to MSNBC, Hillary Clinton “won” Nevada. But, it looks like she “won” the Nevada primary in about the same way that Al Gore “won” the U.S. election in 2000 (momentarily putting aside the “unpleasantness” in Florida.) According to MSNBC’s election data (at least as I’m viewing it at (9:10 EST on 1/19/08), Clinton won the popular vote for the state, but under the rules for selecting delegates, Obama won 13 delegates while Clinton won 12.

I suppose you have to be clear on the object of the exercise to know who won or lost. (And, for what it’s worthy, the candidate I favor — John Edwards — clearly lost, with 4% of the vote (the caucus system makes it look worse than it actually was, though it wasn’t good by any measure) and 0 delegates.)

Daily Kos references a question posed to Hillary Clinton with respect to which Presidential portraits you’d hang up in your office if you were President. So, basically, which Presidents do you find the most inspiring.

An easy starter – Lincoln. I had a buddy in college who said that, if he was lost in a literature class, his fall back was to say that one of the characters represented the Christ figure. In American politics, Lincoln truly is the Christ figure. There is a real sense that he died for our sins and saved the Union. And, let’s face it, he put the boot to the treasonous Confederates, about whom I obviously still have a bug up my ass.

Also, I’d put Teddy Roosevelt up there. Oh, sure, he was an imperialist and a pretentious moralizer, but his energy was boundless and his love for this country undeniable. And, he did some trust busting and loved the West.

Beyond that, it’s a little up in the air. I’d give serious consideration to James Madison, less for his Presidency and more for his role as the architect of our Constitution. James K. Polk, because, even though he was an imperialist and a slaver, he mostly kept his campaign promises and he acquired some really cool territory for the United States. Perhaps Dwight Eisenhower, because he’s a very distant relative.

Looking back at my list, I guess limited government and respect for civil rights don’t make for very memorable Presidencies. All of the above (except for maybe Madison) tended toward the authoritarian or expansionist. Oh well. They make for good reading.

South Carolina: First in Treason, First in political smear campaigns. South Carolina, the state that first committed treason against the United States to defend the sacred right of some of its citizens to own other people, is also developing quite a reputation for smear politics. The Evansville Courier Press manages to comment on several smear campaigns conducted by Bush supporters without ever mentioning the name “Bush.”

In 2000, South Carolina is where Bush effectively put an end to John “Weathervane” McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign. Among the highlights of that primary contest – false push polls alleging that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock — the speck of fact to which this apparently alludes was the adoption by McCain and his wife of a Bangladeshi child. Another charming “fact” used to attack the McCain campaign were allegations of drug use by his ex-wife. This year, a group of veterans opposed to McCain is apparently pushing the idea that McCain sold out his fellow soldiers when he was a POW in Viet Nam. I have lost quite a bit of respect for McCain between 2000 when I first became aware of him and today. His flip-flopping on the role of religious demagogues in his party and the wisdom of the Bush tax cuts as well as his refusal to do anything about Bush and Rumsfeld’s mishandling of Iraq have seriously diminished McCain in my eyes. Be that as it may, he deserves a lot better than he’s been getting in the cesspool of South Carolinian politics. During this campaign season, we are treated to the factoid that, since 1980, the Republican winner of South Carolina’s primary has gone on to get the GOP nomination. That explains quite a bit, I suppose.

As for the Evansville Courier Press, they manage to bring up the Swiftboat lies against John Kerry on behalf of Bush without mentioning Bush. They never mention Bush when discussing the attacks against McCain in 2000. And when they discuss Lee Atwater, they don’t mention his most infamous campaign — the Willie Horton attack of Dukakis on behalf of Bush the Elder. No one party or political dynasty has a lock on political dirty tricks, but the Bush clan has been effectively using smear politics for a long time now; and their minions — notably Atwater and Rove — have perfected the dark art.

Some numbers to back up the notion that John Edwards is getting next to zero media attention. Edwards is competitive in Iowa before the primaries – no coverage? Edwards beats Clinton in Iowa? Still no coverage – it’s all about Obama & Clinton. Edwards comes in 3rd in New Hampshire? The attention to Clinton is clearly justified at that point. Now, Edwards is statistically tied with Obama and Clinton in Nevada? Still no coverage.

It’s so bad that I suspect if Edwards wins Nevada with Obama second and Clinton third, the news coverage will be “Obama beats Clinton.”

Nothing Edwards can do about it, I suppose. Just keep himself in the game and see if any opportunities present themselves.